Which marketing Channel Should You Focus on First and then Next?

If you're limited on resources, prioritize website traffic strategies that yield the most leads and sales while requiring minimal resources. In this lesson, I list the main methods of generating traffic to your website and the order you should deploy each method if you sell products or services. I also explain when you should deviate from this guideline if you have a different type of business that doesn't sell products and services.

Timestamps for Each Video Section

- Introduction: 0:00

- on-page SEO: 01:03

- Google Business: 03:59

- Content Marketing Part 1: 08:40

- Social Media Marketing Part 1: 15:16

- Paid Advertising: 16:30

   - Google Ads: 18:57

  - Facbook and Instagram Ads: 23:14

  - Pinterest: 24:15

  - TikTok: 25:31

- Email Marketing: 26:16

  - Welcome/Branding Series 30:09

  - From lead to saling the product: 31:00

  - Automated Upsel Sequence: 32:39

  - The General Bucket Great Content Email Sequence: 35:05

- Content Marketing Part 2: 42:34

- Social media marketing part 2: 45:19

- Influencer Marketing: 45:27

- Off Page SEO: 48:30

- When should you follow that guideline and when should you not: 53:32

The Overview of Website Traffic Strategies and Why They Are Listed in This Order:

Above is the list of website traffic methods listed in the order in which you should deploy them if you sell products and services.

I'll take you through each of these website traffic strategies and provide a brief explanation for why they're listed in the specific order. By understanding the purpose of each method and the pros and cons it can bring to your marketing efforts, you'll be able to make an informed decision on where to focus your resources for maximum impact. So, let's dive in and take a closer look at each strategy!

On-Page SEO:

SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization". It's the process of getting your website listed on search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo, and ranking as high up on their search results.

On-page SEO involves optimizing your website and its individual pages to help search engines understand the content and purpose of each page. This is achieved by strategically incorporating keywords and other elements directly into your website's code and content.

It's the first website traffic strategy on the list for a good reason. When it comes to selling products or services online, a website is a fundamental requirement. By incorporating on-page SEO tactics into your website creation process, you can quickly introduce your content to search engines.

You're telling search engines: "Hey, I'm [copany name] and this is what I provide and this is what each page of my website is about. Nice to meet you Google, Bing, Yahoo and the others".

Don't expect much from that one step. It's one thing to introduce yourself to search engines. It's another for them to trust you. Search engines prioritize websites they trust over those they don't yet trust, so earning their trust requires more than just basic on-page optimization. 

We'll talk about how you can earn their trust further in this document.

Off-Page SEO - Google Business

Off-Page SEO involves activities to further help your business rank on Google's search results and increase your credibility and trust with Google.

A Google Business listing is especially important and is second on our list because while sponsored listings are displayed at the top of the search result page, the Google Business listings are immediately below them, making them the first organic results that users see.

You have to scroll down further before seeing the first free listings of websites. So having a Google Business is advantageous if you qualify for one.

So who qualifies for a Google Business listing?

Well, you have to be the type of business that meets your clients, or customer, in person. Either the client comes to your place of business, or you go to them.

You don't qualify for a Google business if you do everying online, like an ecommerce store, and never meet the client in person.

If you do qualify for a Google Business then be careful on how you set it up as you need to set up your account differently if clients come see you than when you go see them, and setting up your account the wrong way can get your account suspended.

Either take the time to read each set and research them if you don't understand what's asked of you, or hire a professional to set it up for you. It's not expensive since it's a quick job. My agency amzemedia.com can certainly help you.

Content Marketing Part 1

Conent marketing is about building authority, credibility, familiarity, understanding and trust with your potential clients or customers.

You publish your content on a blog and on social platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc.

Here, you want to create content that address common objections, highlight benefits, build familiarity with you, your expertise, your product or servce and your brand.

Buy why? Why is content marketing third on our list if it can take a year before you start to see a positive return on your investment?

Well, you only need to create enough content so when people see your advertisement and decide to research your company on social media, they can consume enough content to feel comfortable buying from you.

They may last less than 2 minute on your website's promotional pages, but they'll spend more time consuming your content on your blog and social media pages if you have good content.

The more content they consume, the more familiar you become to them and the more they'll trust you over your competition. It's that simple.

Now, you may be asking yourself whether you can get away with skipping this step, after all it's more work on your plate.

The answer is maybe. This step by itself won't yet bring you a lot of business. Here, we're setting ourselves up for a successful advertising campaign. You'll be surprise to see how many people will check your social media accounts as part of their due dilligence.

However, you may be able to skip this step and still have a viable ad campaign if you're able to create advertisement that visually demonstrates the main benefits that your potential clients are looking for in your products and services, and you're online sales process is good enough. If that's the case, enough buyers may take you up on your offer without doing their usual due diligence.

Having said that, you'll improve your sales by doing this step since there always will be a percentage of potential clients doing their due dilligence.

So what content should you create?

Ask yourself, what do your potential clients seek to know before buying from someone like you? What would excite them about your product or service? What objections do they have that you should address?

The best content marketing campaigns are based on research. You should take some time researching what people are saying about companies, products and services like yours and make sure to tabulate the benefits, pain points and concerns they mention. This will give you the information you need to plan a good content marketing campaign.

Social Media Marketing Part 1

What's the difference between a social media marketing and content marketing you ask?

The purpose of content marketing is about establishing you as an authority in your field, building trust with potential clients and creating a sensen of familiarity in your brand.

The purpose of social media marketing is to start conversations and getting your potential clients engaged with your brand.

Social media content is typically shorter than conten marketing posts.

Ideally, you have a mixture of both: content marketing and social media posts.

The good news is Social media posts are easy and quick to produce. You can use them to promote your content marketing posts, or ask your viewers what they though of your latest content, what they want to see from you next, etc.

The idea is to start conversations. You want engagements such as likes, comments and feedback.

Paid Advertising

This is the first step on our list where you'll be driving a volume of leads and sales.

Nothing will scale up your sales like paid advertising, so it's important to figure out a way to launch viable paid advertising campaigns.

Paid advertising is especially important when you're not yet getting much traffic and sales from SEO, social media and content marketing campaigns. It can take more than a year or two to rank well on Google's search results for competitive keywords and it can take more than 6 months to a year to generate a positive return on your marketing investment with social media and content marketing.

This leaves you with paid advertising as the main strategy to keep the business going and finance the other marketing strategies until they in turn generate enough business to pay for themselves.

The good news is online advertising platforms have become incredibly good at finding and targeting the right audience at the right time with the right message. And never in our history have we been able to show follow up ads to people who have recently shown interest in our products and services.

The bad news is they've also become more complex to set up, so it's easy to set them up the wrong way and blow your entire marketing budget with little results.

Almost 100% of my clients have told me that online marketing doesn't work for them. They tried it and it didn't work for their business. Then I convince them to let me try and what do you know... it works!

By the way, I will be sharing some tips on how I launch viable ad campaigns with my subscribers that I won't reveal anywhere else. I invite you to take a few minutes to subscribe to my newsletter:

Alright, In the video I posted at the top of this blog, I go over each advertising platforms, from Google, YouTube and Facebook, to Pinterest and Tiktok. You can watch that part in the video as I provide details I simply can't in this post.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is hands down the most profitable way of promoting your products and services. It cost nothing to send an email broadcast to your list.

I'll let you in on a secret.

Have you ever wondered how some of businesses can afford to pay so much more for advertising and their competitors?

I go over an example that explains that phenomenon in the video at 26:16 into the video. It's definitely worth listening to that section of that video.

For now, I'll say this: It's expensive to acquire a new customer. That's why you want to be able to sell more than one product or service to that same customer. This is where email marketing comes into play. Once you add a lead or a buyer to your list, you want to be able to provide other valuable products and services that your audience need. these other products should be complimentary or related to your main product or service.

Companies that have complimentary, introductory, and related products and services can often outspend their competitors because they don't depend on that first sale to make a profit. If they have good email automation campaigns in place, they can break even and even lose some money on the first sale, knowing they'll make their profit on future sales.

I invite you to watch the email section of the video as I provide a well-known example where a business owner made millions by spending $60 to sell a $27 ebook.

The video is also best to explain the different types of email automation campaigns and how they're used.

Let's move on to the next strategy.

Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing Part 2

Now that you have some successful ad campaign running and you're business is growing, you can take a percentage of your profit and invest in more content marketing and social media posts.

Why? Well, there are a few good reasons.

• It helps your SEO.
• Each blog post on your website will rank for related keywords, especially if you answer common questions that people ask about the problem they face. This is where research comes into play. I can show you what questions people search online for which you can create good content.
• Google favors websites that are actively posting fresh content. The good news is most of your competitors don't post fresh content regularly, so you may not need to post that often, but the more fresh content you post the more Google will favor your website above your competitors.
• After a while, your social media accounts will start sending you more and more traffic and pay for themselves.
• It will further help your paid advertising. The more content you have that your potential clients can consume, the more they'll be sold about your products and services. This will further lower your cost to acquire a buyer.

For those reasons, I encourage you to resume and continue your content marketing and social media camnpaigns as soon as you have successful paid advertising campaigns and can afford it.

Influencer Marketing

I use influencers to promote my products and services to their followers and subscribers. I also use the content they create as paid ads. Paid ads created by influencers can be very effective.

If you're in the construction industry, how powerful would it be if Holms on Homes or Property Brothers were to endorse your product or service?

Don't worry if you can't afford to pay these guys to endorse your product or service. There are thousands of influencers in that industry of varying fame that you can afford and would do a great job at endorsing your products and sercices.

I even used "influencers" that had few followers but their content looked great and you could tell they were up and coming. These infuencers need content and will often create content to endorse your products and services for free. You can then use their content in your paid advertising campaigns.

I give a few more tips in my video so it's worth watching that section of the video.

Off Page SEO

Alright, we finally end with off-page SEO.

This is last on the list because it can take a year or event 2 to 3 years to rank your website on the first page of the search results for competitive keywords.

The good news is a lot of the work you did in previous steps helps your SEO. For example, posting good content on social media will help your SEO.

You'll find that social media post often rank well on Google, and will rank on the first page of Google's search results for competitive keywords before your website makes it to the first page.

You often find YouTube videos ranking for specific keywords, and they'll rank above the number one website in the search results.

But now it's time to focus on off-page SEO. This is all about building credibility.

So what's involved in off-page SEO?

Well, it's all about what others are saying about you. You're looking for other people to endorse in one form or another your products, services or content.

How can they endorse it?

• Well, you want them to link to specific pages on your website. That's seen by search engines as an endorsement. That's the big one. And a link from a site that Google deems reputable or an authority is worth much more than a link from an obscure website. For example, one link from a university website would be worth more than 100 links from 100 small obscure websites. A good SEO expert will know how to get good links from reputable websites.
• If you have good content on your blog and social media platforms that is being shared, and liked, that also helps to show Google that you're a genuine website, you're an authority in your industry and people like your content.
• In essense, you need other websites to talk about your business, products and services. There are a multitude of strategies to accomplish that.

Off-site SEO is a challenging activity where you can waste a lot of time if you don't know what you're doing. It's worthwhile to have an expert help you through the steps even if you want to save money and do it in-house - then hire a consultant to show you the ropes.

I you need help with any of these steps, then check out my marketing agency Amze Media.

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